


Storm Chasers (Social Distance)

by sickofires



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Earth C (Homestuck), M/M, Storm Chasing, Time Shenanigans, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29938233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sickofires/pseuds/sickofires
Summary: Alternia never had struggles with the planet itself to the degree that Earth does. The Condesce egregiously controlled every aspect of industry and kept the planet’s resources sustainable. Why wouldn’t she? It was at the expense of most trolls receiving poverty level rations, but no atmospheric disturbances would ever come to your race. Sure, the empress was a vicious hemofacist dictator, but everyone knows how to sustain a planet.Apparently, humans don’t.Dave calls this period in Earth C history The Great Flood of 2140, or in SBAHJ, “of 420.”
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of supposed to take place right before the Prologue of the Epilogues.

After SBURB, Earth C had a period of time, unbeknownst to current historians, in which it became a lot like Dave’s Earth. This happened during the 5000 years you skipped, of course. Last night, Dave told you he was finally serious about exercising some of his leftover power, the way John can still Retcon, Rose “has visions,” Jade can sense the Green Sun.

He wanted to explore the timeline, he explained, and asked if you would come with him.

You are currently in the late summer of 2141, where parts of Earth C are undergoing severe major storms due to “climate change.” Dave loves this time in Earth C’s history, re: the history books he’s been obsessively reading while you and he hermit yourselves. Because growing up in Texas, he dealt with major hurricanes and tornadoes.

Alternia never had struggles with the planet itself to the degree that Earth does. The Condesce egregiously controlled every aspect of industry and kept the planet’s resources sustainable. Why wouldn’t she? It was at the expense of most trolls receiving poverty level rations, but no atmospheric disturbances would ever come to your race. Sure, the empress was a vicious hemofacist dictator, but everyone knows how to sustain a planet.

Apparently, humans don’t.

Dave calls this period in Earth C history The Great Flood of 2140, or in _SBAHJ_ , “of 420.”

You sit across from him at a coffee shop burrowed in an otherwise abandoned shopping center. Mandatory curfews go into affect again at 7:00 P.M. At around 5:00, when the tornado warning alarms stopped, people began emerging from below ground to fill the brick lined streets. Traffic here is much more sparse than it is where you live in 5000. Many beings look as though they could be going to war at any moment, masks, oxygen tanks, concealed weapons, while still others look as though they’re on vacation.

Groups of mixed troll/human groups are splitting large grub/pastry meals at tables beside you, not close enough to hear you over their eager chatter. Pairs of armed radicals - mostly consorts, carapaces and trolls – show each other images in manila folders, speaking in hushed tones in comparison. This coffee shop is warm, espresso and almond extract coating the air thick; glass windows with iron barrier-shutters that come from the ceiling; dry and fresh foods on display.

Dave’s hair has become white-blonde lately, swept up off his forehead, sunglasses perched at the crown for you; skin bronzed from the hot chocolate he sips, freckles darker than normal, more emerged on his cheekbones; hands calloused, knuckles scabbed. You could look at him all night.

But you still have questions about the gravity of your escape here. It didn't even feel like you'd traveled, like your body had rematerialized or violated spacetime. One second you were in your hive, the next you were in this desert. His magic.

You know you’re supposed to be doing this slip for yourselves, and you’re intrigued by the sudden, complete immersion tactic Dave’s using in his latest history lesson. But what about the population here? Knowing they’ll walk to their deaths via Great Flood soon, knowing you can’t help the radicals, just an observer in hiding. Any action too radical from you could cause a paradox.

That’s why you have aliases, though it’s not like you’re going to speak to anyone. But you can’t help but be invested in the story, its parallels to your past and future. Luckily for your interest in the story, Dave’s mind is a wealth of information about time. You love that about him.

“This hood of Earth C is what used to be the American South, so they’ve got trolls, carapaces, consorts, humans in one hot ass melting pot. We’re sitting in the C equivalent of Reno, Oklahoma. The city government is pretty much completely ignoring all the flooding outside the city ‘cause the red tape’s been mixed with the private sector like the worst cocktail anybody made. Like fuckin’ white Hennessy with fuckin’ Gatorade or some shit.”

“This coming from the human liquor connoisseur who regularly drinks Tequila Mountain Dew.”

“Redneck margaritas are a staple of culture and I won’t yeehaw-pologize about it.”

“Drown.”

“Make me.”

You have been living with Dave for sweeps, and those vague little threats never fail to make your bloodpusher jump.

“Hippocorp funded super PACs are organized by the climate change deniers Obama was try’na set straight back in the day ‘cause the man is a prophet. ‘dunno how the deniers managed to rebirth themselves here but our universe did have cancer. No offense.”

“Some taken.”

“The state of Oklahoma sued the national government slash corporate entity in 2081 because a majority of their structures got wiped by the hurricane-tornadoes – tornadicanes – hurridoes? - hurricanados – and the weather events got so bad that some eighty percent of the state lived in poverty and no one was recording it. Fifty-k deaths and counting and a motherfucker in the cities on the coast, or the Salamanders overdosing from bad juju trips. The suit got dismissed but Hippocorp spent $3 billion rebuilding Oklahoma into the post apocalyptic, curfew enforced, partially underground, partially underwater, Starbucks-filled dreamscape you see before you here in 2140. The storms are still out there, outside the quote-on-quote weatherproof dome surrounding Reno. This is the year the dam around us breaks. For good.”

“Didn’t Dirk and Roxy’s universe flood because of the Condesce?”

“Yeah. We did make the Earth, and if the O.G. was really just there so these four random, racially ambiguous kids could give birth to themselves, it’s bound to repeat some of our history. Anyway this doesn’t get nearly as fucking ridiculous as two human survivors.”

Dave pauses, which is rare.

“Spoilers or nah?”

Again with the jump to your heart. The ripple in time. That spark, the knowledge that it’s just you and him, that the fabric of reality could change around you if he willed it, but he doesn't. Running alongside the frontrunner of the universe so far.

“Fuck it,” you say, breathless, “spoil me.”

“The corporate backed government rebuilds mostly everything in Oklahoma and then some four years after the dam breaks. Those who survive get back above ground, free housing, local parks, restaurants, venues, the common comforts we’ve come to know and love in year 5000. Hippocorp slowly liquidates their entire $50 billion into the stonks. Then suddenly, on Flood night anniversary that fourth year, the company slash government completely disappears. By year five, no one even remembers them. How? Don’t fuckin’ know. And then The Mayor who doesn’t remember either was all ‘let me casually change the world by issuing the first massive overhaul of the Kingdom Equality Act,’ which went down in history so hard that it’s all this time period gets remembered for.”

“It’s what he deserves.”

“It’s what he deserves. Not even any mention of extreme weather this century in literally all the books. All of them. No known survivors of it in 5000, or hell, 3500.”

You observe as two trolls with weapons come into the store. Their horns give away what their blood color and age might be to you – cerulean, a decade or two past you – what part of Alternia they would’ve been from were they not clones. Some humans and carapaces in the room watch the two of them closely. You think of Vriska Serket, wish you wouldn't.

Xenophobia is a silent undercurrent in every room on Earth C, even to you, a supposed god. Undetectable to most, even trolls themselves. You know it because you can’t not know it. You were not much more than a cullable mutant. Now you’re just an anomaly, still the only one in existence. This is why you spend 98% of your time indoors.

You realize that you zoned out on Dave, but he doesn’t usually notice. Well, shit. Dave is watching the trolls that you just were. So you ask:

“What’s the human opinion on us in 2140?”

“You’re free. Kinda. Weird high as fuck taxes on troll 'imports,' living grounds are harder to maintain than everyone else’s, horns don't fit through some public doors. You’re definitely spending way more dough than humans to stay alive, carapaces and consorts probably too. The trolls are gonna outlive the species of other kingdoms during the worst of the storms, especially seadwellers, so it’s like you pay a tax for just happening to be born strong in advance or something. But at least Hippocorp a.k.a. Crockercorp has always been on your side...”

Dave stops messing with his cup, tilts his head back, sighs.

As if that was just a casual information drop.

Your gastric sac turns. You knew you were seeing one too many spoon insignias on t-shirts, automobile stickers. Inverted, a red spoon instead of a white one, shaped differently, but still. You told yourself when you got here that seeing The Condesce’s weapon symbol was as harmless as seeing thousands of human children and baby Salamanders wear long extinct troll signs, greeting cards and wallets decorated with them in off colors, innocent design patterns weaving themselves throughout the DNA of the new society, like a misplaced glitch.

The comforts of living with Dave Strider have dulled your sense of suspicion, except that Jane’s massive organization in 5000 has been knocking that alarm button in your lonely head for several sweeps.

You should know a regime masked as a business opportunity when you see one.

But this parallel is chronologically impossible. _It has to be_ _._ Three thousand years before you got here? How?

“So.” Your voice comes out rougher than you expect, so your clear your cords. Dave’s hands suddenly find his cup interesting again. "Crockercorp, huh?”

Dave takes a sip from his chocolate, swallows hard. “Yeah, huh.”

“So how the sweet, unknowable, paradoxical fuck did Jane start Crockercorp here, in the past, without us?”

“I got theories.”

His crimson eyes do that thing, sparking open, pulse under his throat jumping a little faster. You feel hot all over. He’s so beautiful.

“’Cause none of this is explicitly in the books, right. The company gets called an ‘emergency financial committee’ of the government, executives and operatives have name changes, nothing's clear. In everything publicly available, it gets called Hippocorp, probably meant to be a play on the hippocratic oath which is a whole ‘nother can of conspiratorial worms. Multiple cans. You could almost say it’s. A can town.”

Dave pauses to clear his throat, too, put his coffee back on the table. He seems to not be able to hold eye contact with you very long anymore, and you feel the same, and you know why.

Some emotional threshold might break if you look too long, during conversations like this.

“But anyway for some backward ass reason, Jane or someone else comes here into the past and installs an early model for Crockercorp, but way more shady and authoritarian.” His hands are now doing the thing where they attempt to illustrate his monologue, poorly. “Pours a godly amount of money into the market, creates thousands of jobs in every kingdom, boosts the economies and stonks so fast that everyone worships the corporation as a deity. Mostly everyone, until nowadays. No one ever finds out the true identity of the founder but Hippocorp’s got literally the same logos and everything. Dunno if you’ve seen ‘em around - ”

“I have.”

Your heart wants to ask, _why didn’t you tell me this when we left?_ How much trouble are you in here, even as historical witnesses? And the age old question that toils your thinkpan re-emerges: how much of the game did you really win if so much death and unfair government still occupies the planet?

But you know that none of this is Dave’s fault. Dave doesn’t influence time so much as he watches it, at least not on Earth C.

“I just have a hard time believing that _no one_ fucking accurately recorded such a blatant government takeover and mass causality event,” you say. “I mean, mass extinctions of troll youth took place on Alternia all the time, but if you really knew how to hack, you could scrub the intergalactic internet for quote – redacted - unquote - receipts from some of the more incompetent generals. And even _if_ you knew jack shit about hacking - the story of my ancestor got told by word of mouth for thousands of sweeps!”

“Well. Someone might’ve recorded it. But.”

Dave looks out the window across the room, at the dark clouds starting to roll in.

“I know for a _fact_ that Jane’s powers don’t let her travel,” he says, “so she obviously got help from someone who can, or whoever’s here gave her some ideas. As we've discussed Lord English probably still just exists outside Earth C, so because every universe ever will never stop fucking with us in some way, there’s a small chance young him has something to do with it. Other than that, it’s either me from the future, John, who I can’t imagine leaving the house for long enough, or someone else who figures out a way to make a time machine. Jake would have to be under some kinda crazy influence that not even Jane could spring on his choice ass. Or it’s Aradia coming out from her well to shame the win condition, but.”

“Aradia doesn’t care enough about winning, communicating with the rest of us, or having anything resembling a tangible influence on the new world.”

“Right.”

“You really don’t think it could’ve been John? He and Jane are really close, or at least, they were before he – you know. Fell off the face of Earth C.”

Dave shrugs. “Guess it could be. Sincerely fucking doubt it’s like, _our_ John. Even if I still can’t get a read on how many offshoot zap Johns exist, I really can’t see any of them – can’t see _him_ \- compromising the doofus heart I know he still has beneath the layers of depression – can’t see him wasting those powers on something so. Anti heroic.”

When he uses those words, you know.

“You think it’s you.”

Dave drinks long, swallows harder, flushes bronze enough that he becomes red at the cheekbones. You still can’t deal with your own blood color showing up on your best friend’s skin.

“Who knows what’s gonna happen is all I’m saying,” Dave says. “But I kinda wanna be sure I don’t turn evil someday and intentionally fuck up history like the planet’s the rat lab and I’m a sadist maze builder, playing my own beat out the speakers and watching ‘em all march to.”

You understand that inane, elaborate metaphor. You both deal with a severe lack of trust in your own selves, always looking out for that shadow version who might follow. It’s why living together has worked, to act as a pair of extra eyes on each other’s backs. Neither of you can trust past Dave and Karkat any more than you can trust their future selves.

But you know that Dave would never do something like politically exacerbate a mass flood, or at least you think. Or have the last however many sweeps growing beside him been nothing? Do you not know that Dave is the kind of soul who does no harm if he can help himself? Who saves the insects that crawl through the garage and takes them back outside so you can’t eat them?

You finally have to ask:

“Not that a slow dying rebellion against an impossible situation isn’t fun, but why is this your favorite time? Is it really just the weather?”

Dave’s demeanor soothes, at that.

“It's the weather. Earth C Oklahoma and Earth C Texas are still neighbors. I grew up with this kinda shit though of course it wasn’t nearly as wild, but. Yeah I fucking love storms.”

You've heard many stories of the nights he and Bro shuttered in for bad rain and flooding. You don’t understand the sentiment, but Dave loved the rain because it was usually so hot.

“I’m having a hard time understanding what’s so terrifying about a fucking breeze,” you tease, regardless.

Dave then swings his chair around to your side of the table, pulls out his phone to start showing you examples of what it looked like on his Earth, which may turn into a YouTube marathon for the next hour, if history means anything. You often find yourself several hours into watching nothing on the couch, slouched so as to clearly see his screen, watching some tiny pixelated video that would make much more sense to blow up on TV. But Dave just forgets (or does he?) and you spend all night with your neck craned into his personal space.

He often offers his shoulder, and you rest your head if you can pull off seeming tired enough to warrant it.

Dave shows you a coastal Texas hurricane from the view of a GoPro camera, waves pushing houses and trees over with ease. He shows you Snapchat footage from Tornado Alley, a famous stretch of Oklahoma, the recorders with death wishes calling themselves “chasers.”

“Holy shit – are those oinkbeasts in the sky?”

“They were.”

“Your planet does shit like this to itself, on purpose, and _this_ is the rotted, molten rock we all agreed that Echidna would work with? What was she supposed to do, spin gold from fucking swamp?”

“You love your creation and you know it.”

You stall, unable to stop a reluctant smile.

But in the last video – Dave warns you it’s intense, “you good?” – the neighbor’s house gets blown up by a tornado and lands on the recorder.

“I just wanna see one that big,” Dave says, quiet. “Up close.”

You raise a brow.

He's been talking about death again lately. This isn't that, but in his very roundabout way, isn't it just?

You left the circular walls of your hive because you needed a jolt. Something make you to feel alive again. But this? Is it too far?

Or do you understand the morbid curiosity now that you're older?

“Given that these things are capable of ripping up lawn rings and launching them like futile projectiles,” you protest regardless, “like, I know you’re immortal, but heaven and hell forbid there be some carapace trapped in a fucking log cabin on fire and you’ll just _have_ to save her.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” Dave assures you for some reason, “to see it. You can stay at the hostel or I can take you somewhere else safe. I mean if you did I _could_ worst case scenario rescue myself or you using travel but I don’t wanna make the time out here last any longer that it’s supposed to.”

Though you're still terrified of the heights he hits while flying, there’s still nothing like the feeling of being weightless in his arms.

_Make the time out here last any longer than it’s supposed to._

You have that deep, sickening thought, the one you had when you packed your suitcase last night. That maybe, it would be nice to disappear again.

“No, I’ll go.”

Dave raises a brow, mirroring you.

“You’re sure.”

It isn’t a question, judging by his tone, but you still can’t always read his tone.

“I’ll see how it goes,” you warn him. “I’ve never seen anything like this before in real life, so I might violently defecate myself within minutes. If that happens, I’m going home immediately and you’re staying here forever.”

“Heard. I wanted to start flying ‘round some of the ‘nados before things get too bad. See how they spin.” He smiles wider, thickening his accent on purpose. “Back ‘round these parts in the dirty South, we used to call that storm chasing.”


	2. Chapter 2

You know you’re not in love with Karkat Vantas, but you’re pretty close. You want to be closer to "just your roommate" slash best friend, like that, but you don’t even remotely know how.

_Kiss him._ The guy eats bugs for a living and has knives for teeth. You don’t actually care about that part. _Write him a poem._ You used to do that on Pesterchum every single day and he doesn’t seem to be clued in to you being almost in love with him. _Tell him you love him._ Karkat doesn’t really know what that means, you think. _You still aren’t sure a bulge, a nook and a dick even work._ You’ve heard a few stories. They sounded wild.

You think that sharing your elaborate, madman time travel theories might bring you closer without having to tell him just so. Grand gestures or something. He’s been impressed so far, if not mildly concerned, but you’d want that even without the extra level of _please touch me I’m so horny._

The night before you leave for 2141, you sit on the couch with him, five feet apart, for reasons.

“How long would we be gone for?”

Karkat says that first, when you ask him to follow you into the past. He doesn’t look shocked. Just tired, as usual. The perpetual dark circles only grow deeper and darker under his lashes. You’re really, really into the dark circles. It doesn’t make any sense. Nor does him being some kind of alien equivalent to intersex or something, since they’re all the same, from what you've heard.

_Focus, Dave._ Karkat’s not looking at you, but down at his hands, curled over his jeans.

“That’s the thing,” you start. “There are at least ten scientifically accurate ballparks I could throw you, catch, son, like seconds and minutes aren’t the same in any given time period, like we could be gone for a decade from the perspective of this xenobiological paradise version of the planet, but in the year 2100 we could be gone for double. The math isn’t consistent enough to make it like a _thing_ but approximately one year in 2100 is like six months in 5000. Young Dave took eighth grade level physics a long time ago and this ain’t fucking Kansas even a little. Jade just makes fun of me for forgetting basic shit at this point.”

“Are you sure this doesn’t fuck things up chronologically? You going into the past?” Direct as always. He’s looking at you now. Glad you have on your shades. “How are you and I supposed to reveal ourselves for the first time in 5000 if they know who we are in 2100?”

“That’s the thing, nobody knows. If they don’t know what I look like for another couple grand, they won’t recognize the face of King David. To them so far I’m just some guy.”

Karkat knows. You just told him. Shit.

You always say too much.

“You’ve done this before," he accuses. "Alone.”

You did. Twice. Last month. Within the span of a century. No one is supposed to know that, obviously, not even Karkat. You went while he was asleep once, and again when he was out of town with Kanaya. It’s risky business fucking with time, you should know. But you simply observed. Walked around like a normal dude, wasn’t expected to talk to anyone.

It was nice, not being a god. Being invisible.

You know Karkat understands that.

“I could do without being treated like I deserve accolades and fawning for establishing world peace," he says then, "when really I’m just an exhausted lazy fuck who skipped the part where they fought passive aggressive xenophobia wars.”

You smile. You love it when Karkat rants, even the canned ones. “Jade was really a real one for gettin’ us giant statues but I’mma need them to stop prostrating in front of it. I was still pickin’ my goddamn nose when I beat SBURB.”

Karkat snorts.

“I don’t know,” he says, quieter. “I'd like to be nobody. I mean, I already fucking am, but other people don’t seem to think so anymore. Just...start over, as someone else to this society. The new world isn’t perfect and I’m tired of acting like it is.”

And then, you watch his catharsis. For having finally said the root of the thing. His eyes slip shut, he exhales. He starts doing that purring thing.

You were not horny like an hour ago and you will not be getting a boner on this here couch. He just really gets you.

“So,” you posit, needing a distraction, “you’ll...come to the past with me? For real for real? Just walking around and shit. Vacation.”

Karkat looks at you again, not sparing you.

“Yeah. I mean, look at us.”

You look down at yourself. You still have crumbs on your sweatpants. You’ve been wearing these for three days now, you think. You’re severely vitamin D deficient underneath them, and no, that isn’t a dick joke. But that works too.

Karkat looks better, but then, you’re biased. His hair is a mess, tangled beyond comprehension and hope, but then, it always is now, because it’s just you and Jade for the most part. The dark circles, as you’ve mentioned, compliment the bone structure carved out of iron under there. He’s thinner than he was when you met him, less stocky, slowly aging like acrid wine, but he didn’t grow much.

“You look fine,” you decide on saying.

He waves his hand, dismissive.

“I wouldn’t mind getting lost for a while, looking like this, even if it was a decade. Anywhere that isn’t ‘xenobiological paradise.’”

Your heart flutters, or something else equally sappy and romantic.

It was lonely, traversing the year 2100. You forced yourself to do it anyway, speaking to no one unless you had to, reading, reading, flying, crying. There’s still a lot of pain and death in the world and you wish you’d never gone back. But what can you do now?

Share it with Karkat, you guess. That’s where you always end up.

“Uh, so. Just so you know I was serious about like shit being out of whack when you get back from time travel, mentally and physically. I’m a god tier savant or whatever, so I got _pretty_ accurate precision at this point, but you don’t wanna be in a room full of me and twelve other doomed Daves, wiping each other’s anime tears and ironically telling each other they know that feel, spitting horror stories about being caught in some loop that lasted three years from their perspective, but was actually all in that one day we played. My point is I am not Doctor Who in this motherfucker and I understand if you don’t wanna be just casually millennia apart from Kanaya, Jade, everyone.”

“John’s depressed, we never see him. Rose is sick beyond belief, Kanaya’s obsessed with that. I don’t know what is going on with Roxy and Calliope. Jade is...well, Jade. We’re shut ins and bordering on agoraphobic, like John. This is going to be the most either of us have done in sweeps and you know it. Let’s do it for us.”

He’s focused.

You swallow hard.

“Is the Mayor alive in 2100?” he asks you suddenly, urgent.

And your intimidation relaxes, falls to the wayside. Sort of.

“Duh. Old, but still kicking and being important and perfect.”

Karkat finally lets go of your eye contact, starts tapping his claws on his knees.

“When did you wanna go?”

Man, that question feels loaded. Your stomach turns. Intimidation back with the vengeance. Karkat should know by now, how you feel. Shouldn’t he? You wait on him and hand foot, have for years. He is your sun and your moon and why you bother waking up. _When do I wanna go? Whenever you want. Just say the word and I’ll take you somewhere you’ll never wanna leave._

“Whenever you’re ready.”


End file.
